Here at Made by Many we have been working on a project called BetaBall. We're really excited about how it has been coming together and we are at a stage where we want to test it with real users again. The project that originally started out as “Alphabet Porridge” has come a long way (read the full story here).

Betaball is a digital toy for children that’s in the development process here at Made by Many. It can be used outdoors and lets children play and create their own games with the added benefit of learning the fundamentals of programming... but more about that to come very soon.

Previously I wrote about the Alphabet Porridge Idea, a concept for a mobile connected ball for creating and playing digital games. The principal reason for Tom and I joining Made by Many was to explore the world of connected devices as part of a two month internship. This post describes the next step of the project where we developed and tested the idea.

We setup two testing sessions to find out how receptive people were to the two ideas, after collecting feedback we set about prototyping Alphabet Porridge. In parallel we began to focus on two things

Hi, I’m Ben, I am a product developer at Made by Many. In July I joined as half of an internship project tasked to explore the world of connected devices. Together, Tom (currently studying Software Development) and I (recent Industrial Design graduate) were given two months to identify key opportunity areas, and develop a final internet-connected product through iterative prototyping and consumer feedback. From the beginning of the project, we have kept a tumblr of everything connected and a little of our progress at alphabet porridge. For the full journey of the project, read on…